


Mourning

by bobbiewickham



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-02 14:12:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2814878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobbiewickham/pseuds/bobbiewickham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Combeferre goes to Montreuil-sur-Mer for one funeral, and ends up attending another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mourning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [genarti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/gifts).



> Written for a prompt from genarti, requesting Combeferre, a lady and an educational experience.

Montreuil-sur-Mer was a town to make a man despair. It is true that Combeferre could be more somber than other men. Nevertheless, he felt sure that even Joly or Bossuet would feel downcast upon seeing the near-empty streets and the haggard faces of Montreuil-sur-Mer.

He was there to provide his dutiful presence at the funeral of an elderly great-uncle. Someone from his branch of the family had to go, and Combeferre was the sacrificial victim. The funeral itself was a thing to provoke despair: no celebration of a life lived with joy and honor, but a gloomy coda to a grasping, crabbed existence. 

Montreuil-sur-Mer had not always been so gray. That was one recurrent theme of the chatter Combeferre picked up in the inn he went to, two or three times over the course of his visit. He went there to make his brief escape from his second cousin’s residence, to drink vinegary wine, to eat watery onion soup, and to breathe freely without having to make awkward small talk. And sitting there amidst the smells of bad wine and worse soup, he learned one thing: Montreuil-sur-Mer had not always been so gray.

There had been a factory. There had been a man—a Monsieur Madeleine, the mayor of this town, who brought industry and provided jobs and helped the poor, until he was unmasked as Jean Valjean, a convict who had fled the law. When he was caught, Montreuil-sur-Mer crumbled. 

As it happened, Combeferre did not have a high opinion of a town that could be so ruined by the loss of one good man. This Valjean was undoubtedly a good man, despite his past crime. But did the men of Montreuil-sur-Mer learn nothing from his example? Did they draw no lessons, build no institutions, create no new traditions, develop no habits that could keep them aloft even after the loss of their mayor? Evidently not. But Combeferre held his tongue and kept this opinion to himself. 

On his last afternoon in Montreuil-sur-Mer, Combeferre sat in the gray inn that was the liveliest in this gray town, and stared morosely into his soup. He jabbed at a bit of onion with his spoon, tearing it to bits. It was more amusing than eating it, anyway.

The inn’s door swung open, and a woman entered. She wore a low-cut dress that made her occupation all too obvious. “I need help,” she announced, addressing no one in particular.

The inn’s other patrons included two old men playing dominoes and a mother trying to make her two children eat the onion soup. They were as unenthused by it as Combeferre himself.

Nobody looked at all interested in the woman’s complaint. “It’s not for me! Marguerite is sick, and needs a doctor,” the woman said, her voice higher and sharper this time. She looked around wildly, searching for anyone who would meet her eyes and respond.

Combeferre rose. “Mademoiselle, I’m a medical student,” he said, leaving some money by his bowl, and taking his coat. He joined her by the door. “Please tell me how I may assist you.”

Her eyes were red-rimmed, her skin blotchy. Her dress hung loosely on an ill-nourished body. Combeferre guessed her to be twenty-five or thirty years of age, though it was very difficult to tell. “I think she’s dying,” she said. “Marguerite. She collapsed in the street, and she’s old, so old—come, quick.” She turned on her heel and strode out the door. Combeferre followed, struggling to keep up—for all her thinness, the woman moved fast.

Down the street, around a corner into an alley, and then a sharp left into another, darker and dirtier and smellier—and there was a frail-seeming lady with gray hair lying in the filth of the street, an overturned sewing basket beside her.

Combeferre knelt beside her, felt her pulse, and shook his head. “Weak,” he said. “Is there somewhere indoors where we can take her?”

“Her room is in this building,” said the woman. Combeferre hoisted Marguerite up much too easily, and the woman took hold of the sewing basket, and they made their way into the dilapidated building the woman had pointed out.

“My name is Combeferre, mademoiselle,” Combeferre said, panting a little as they climbed to the sixth floor. He had forgotten about the social niceties earlier. 

“I’m called Léonie.” She opened the door to Marguerite’s apartment, pulling a key out of a fold in her skirt. It was a tiny garret, with one lonely candle on a table, and some pale light entering through the square pane on the wall. Combeferre laid Marguerite down on the neatly made bed, as Léonie lit the candle and brought it over.

Marguerite stirred, opened her eyes, and blinked. “What—”

“You fell over in the street, dear,” said Léonie. Her voice was harsh and guttural, but she sounded gentle as she spoke to her friend. “Monsieur Combeferre here is a medical student. He will help you.”

Marguerite gave him a look, feeble but unimpressed. “Child, I’m afraid I’m beyond the help of any clever young men in medical school,” she said to Léonie, slowly, and with gasps for breath between words.

Combeferre feared she might be right, but declined to say so just yet. “Madame, if you will allow me to check your pulse?” It might be stronger now, after all—but it wasn’t.

Marguerite, catching the look Combeferre quickly concealed, began to chuckle. At least, Combeferre thought it was a chuckle. It was low and weak enough to be a sigh, or simply another struggling breath. “He knows I’m right,” she said, with even greater difficulty this time.

“You should save your strength,” said Léonie, pressing Marguerite’s hand. “Rest, now, and I’ll make you a tisane, and then you’ll feel much better.”

“A tisane, yes,” said Combeferre. “Mademoiselle is right, it’s better to save your strength.”

Marguerite shook her head. “I only have a short while left, even if I survive this…whatever this is. I won’t spend it in silence. I will talk while I can, thank you.” Combeferre, recognizing the spirit behind each gasped-out word, could not wholly suppress a smile. “You can sit here and listen, if you don’t mind, while Léonie is busy.”

“It would be an honor,” Combeferre said gravely. To him there was no greater honor than this: to be present with his fellow men in their most dire moments, and to help them however he could—even by simply sitting by them, if that was what they wanted.

“Marguerite, you have no water,” Léonie interjected, after some banging of cupboard doors.

“I will fetch some, and then return,” Combeferre, with some haste, remembering the six flights of stairs, and Léonie’s thin arms. As he left the room, Léonie came with him onto the tiny landing.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I’m glad _someone_ else is here for this, not just me. Marguerite’s wonderful.” Combeferre simply nodded, which seemed to encourage Léonie to go on. “She’s taught me so much—tried to help me so I could stop doing…well…but I couldn’t, it wasn’t enough, but she still helped, and she never—she never scolded me, or bossed me, or anything. She deserves better,” Léonie finished. “Better than to die alone and forgotten, with no witness but a whore.”

Combeferre felt a twist of pity. “I’m sure Madame Marguerite is happy to have a friend like you by her side, Mademoiselle.” He went down the stairs, collected water, and lugged the full pail all the way up the six flights again, reflecting that perhaps he should take more exercise, and wondering at a world that would force a weak old woman to make such a climb daily. 

“Léonie’s a good girl,” said Marguerite, when Combeferre returned to her side after handing off the water to Léonie. “Clever, and careful. She saves money to support her sister. I’ve tried to be a friend to her, but I am only a poor old woman, and I can only do a little.” She took a raw, shuddering breath. “At least she didn’t hide from me in shame when she had to take to the streets, poor girl. I knew another, once—” Marguerite’s words disappeared into those painful gasps once more. They sounded more like cries than breaths, and Combeferre held back a flinch at each one.

Léonie came back to Marguerite’s side with her tisane. Marguerite sipped at it carefully, as if afraid she was so feeble it might hurt her. 

“Fantine,” said Marguerite, handing the tisane back to Léonie to hold. “That was her name,” she added, when Léonie and Combeferre looked confused. “The friend I had, who disappeared when she felt she couldn’t face anyone. Monsieur Madeleine, he sent her packing from his factory—”

“The mayor?” Combeferre was surprised, not least at the slight edge in Marguerite’s voice. This was the first bad word he had heard anyone say about Madeleine.

“Not everyone always thought he was a saint,” rasped Marguerite. “There was a time people thought he was the devil, when they learned he was a convict, though I never did. He was a good man, he did many good things for this town, but he failed in understanding at this one thing. He had a rule—”

She cut off again, interrupted by another desperate breath.

“He had a rule about his women workers being honest and good and pure, and the supervisor threw Fantine out because of this rule, since she had a child,” said Léonie, having clearly heard this story before. “I hear he helped her later, but by then she was very ill, after living on the streets for so long and, well, she died.”

“Such a rule might be understandable,” said Combeferre thoughtfully, “to discourage poor behavior while at work, and to prevent exploitation of the women by the workingmen…”

Marguerite snorted. Combeferre wouldn’t have thought she had the breath left to manage such a thing, but manage she did. “Discourage sin, by punishing those already hurt by it? Seems cruel. Unchristian. Only an old woman, what do I know?” The words came slower now, the gasps between them deeper and hoarser.

“Possibly Fantine just wanted to earn an honest wage, without the mayor concerning himself too much with her behavior,” said Léonie, with a touch of dryness in her voice. “If she were a bad woman—well, the mayor couldn’t change that by taking away her honest work, could he?” She squeezed Marguerite’s hand, and Combeferre realized that she was talking mostly to distract Marguerite from any fear or pain, in these moments that seemed so likely to be final. She was right, though. One man couldn’t impose goodness from above. It would crumble in his wake, and cause cruelties even in his presence. 

“Léonie,” said Marguerite. Combeferre saw her fingers tighten around Léonie’s hand. “I—take care—” And then it was only more gasps, with shaking shoulders and seized up muscles, each breath weaker than the last, until she was silent and still. 

“She will need a priest.” Léonie’s voice was even, but when Combeferre turned to look at her, he saw that her face was wet.

“I will find one,” said Combeferre. He felt this venerable woman deserved better than a public funeral, but knew he could not afford to pay for one for her, lacking a Bahorel-esque allowance.

Instead he attended the perfunctory service for Marguerite with Léonie, and stood beside her while she wept.


End file.
